Reply to "Half shaft question"

Trusty, that disc-shaped steel dust plug cannot reliably be installed while the halfshaft is in place, but driving without it- NOT on dirt roads or during monsoon rain- will not hurt anything. It's there to keep dirt & water out of the slip-joint and chassis grease inside wher it doesn't make a mess. Under the screw-on collar should be a nice greasy felt ring, and the whole assembly should be greased thru it's zerk fitting once in a while, as should the u-joints themselves if yours have zerks.

While it's out & cleaned up, check the splines for twist and sticking- this is the direct result of decades of drag-race starts from wannabe racers. I've seen some halfshafts that are almost frozen. Some halfshaft yokes are too loose for replacement u-joints to press in, and should be discarded. Some vendors have usable parts for OEM and Spicer halfshaftss.

OEM halfshafts use huge #1410 u-joints. A replacement Pantera halfshaft made by Spicer was popular in the '80s and uses intermediate #1350 size u-joints that are popular for racing, as the whole assembly is lighter but plenty strong. Spicer's U.S-made halfshafts and u-joints were lighter, smaller and cheaper than OEMs (before vendors found cheap #1410 replacements; they were once around $75 each!) #1350s interchange with Ford F-500 truck units.'70s Corvettes and Camaros use even smaller #1310 u-joints, which do fail occasionally.